Daft Punk, Asterix and Croissants

After watching almost four hours of Olympic opening ceremony last night I've woken up with one abiding impression; fuck other nations. No, seriously, fuck them. What other nation on Earth can claim to come even vaguely close to the sheer ragtag madcap spangled brilliance of the British Isles? France? Fuck off. Go sit in the corner with an onion or something. No, don't get up til I say so. Don't even fucking look round. I'm not kidding.

I haven't written anything on the blog for an embarrassingly long while, and one of the reasons for this was apathy. Sure, I'd spent a good few dozen posts honing and establishing a serenely satirical, comedically ranting style. I had the Platt-blog framework down to pat. I'd take a topic, get a bit angry about it, make a few jokes, clangingly drop in a masturbation metaphor to please the hardcore fans, and the job was done. Except after a while, I ended up looking at things and thinking, you know, what's the point? Why bother?

Over the last few weeks I've tried desperately to think of something to say about the Olympics that's worth people taking a two minute detour from their Facebook feeds to read, and I just couldn't. Too corporate and shonkey to be praised, too earnest and genuinely heartfelt to be derided, there was no side to come down on. It was like anticipating a nativity performance involving an infant relative; it will no doubt be adorable, and he's put too much into it for you not be be proud of him, but he can't sing for shit and even under his shepherd's robe you can still see the gentle bulge of his budding man-tits. I had no angle to take.

And then I watched the ceremony. And it was amazing. It was inspiring. And it shook me to the core because it did what nothing about the preparation thus far has been able to do; remind us that, hey, wait a minute, we're fucking Britain.

Amongst all the run-up furore - the G4S debacle, the unsold stadium, the thousands of spare football tickets - and all the godawful marketing bollocks, it was hard to shake the infamously pessimistic self-image we've had of ourselves of late. Welcome to Britain, we seemed to be saying; our economy's shit, we're run by dickheads, and everything we do feels a bit second-rate, but don't be too mean about us and we'll promise to stop Phil Collins from emigrating again.

What I loved about the ceremony was that it started out predictably - a large spectacle show that illustrated a rather earnest aspect of our national history and ended up just being a series of raised fingers to the rest of the world. It's as if Danny Boyle did the whole countryside/industrial revolution transformation bit, looked around, saw the pleasant but not overtly astounded faces of the other nations and just wait; well, you know what, fuck it. We've got James Bond. James fucking Bond. And the Queen. In a helicopter. Parachuting. Yeah, fuck you. And you know what else? Free healthcare. That right, free motherfucking healthcare. And Voldemort. Fighting Mary Poppins. Fucking eat it, you bastards! And look! We've got Mr. Bean! And the Rolling Stones! And the Sex Pistols! And Alex Turner! And a Beatle! In the flesh! Are you watching France?!! Are you paying attention. Drink us in, you mothers! Drink, you inferior people of the world, you vermin, you slugs, drink in the might of this great nation! Kneel before us, maggots, kneel before us and DRINK!!!


What made it all the better was the knowledge that, had France been made the hosts in our place, they'd have fucked it up. They'd have got the Cirque de Soleil in, and some teenager with a piano, and a bunch of infants in wigs singing about diplomacy, and it would have been wank. You want to have a killer opening ceremony for the future, France. I've got your best bet right here. Daft Punk, Asterix and Croissants. On a motorcycle. In berets. You'd be set.